"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... similar to No. 17 were passed in the Province of Quebec, what do you think our duty towards it would be? Supposing Sir Lomer Gouin—I cannot imagine it—but supposing he did have the courage, or the nerve, so to speak, to pass a regulation of that kind. There would be a rebellion in this Province, I think. And here we have our French-Canadian brethren in the sister Province who by constitutional means ...
— Bilingualism - Address delivered before the Quebec Canadian Club, at - Quebec, Tuesday, March 28th, 1916 • N. A. Belcourt
... 'Well, what a nerve the young woman has!' he said at last in tones of admiration, and gazing at Miss Johnson with all his might. 'After all, Jack's taste is not so bad. She's ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... to his mind vividly came the picture of Alice's hurt face, when, that very morning, he had roughly taken from her his old stamp book, his own call came through the air. Every nerve in his body tingled a response! It was Freddie Murdock—they had often talked back and forth across the lake from where, on the Canadian shore, Freddie Murdock's father had a cottage. And the words that ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... her father could not get away. He consistently spent his days in overworking, and his evenings in wishing he hadn't overworked. He was attractive, fresh, pink-cheeked, white-mustached, and nerve-twitching with years ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Planus's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... save the nerve-worn and sleepless, or thinkers standing with hands to the eyes on some crag above the multitude, see things thus in skeleton outline, bare of flesh? In Surbiton the skeleton ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... his rear, who were sure to rise the instant the opportunity were given, and avenge the atrocious massacre of neighbors and friends. The only hope that he had was to secure the girl while attempting to reach this place of safety, and there could be no doubt he would strain every nerve to ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... close intervals; the first and most perceptible intervals are the 8th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd major. Each of the simple sounds which, taken together, constitute the whole sound, causes the vibration of a special group of fibres in the auditory nerve. This fact, often repeated, generates a kind of organic predisposition which is confirmed by heredity. If from any cause one of these groups is set in motion, the other groups will have a tendency ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... and don't funk it like this," said Senor Sperati, who had graciously consented to assist him with his dressing because of the injury to his hand. "The idea of you losing your nerve, you of all men, and because of a little affair like that. You know very well that Nero is as safe as a kitten to-night, that he never has two smiling turns in the same week, much less the same day. Your act's the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Commission, once said to him: "Mr. President, I am here at almost every hour of the day or night, and I never saw you at the table, do you ever eat?" "I try to," replied the President; "I manage to browse about pretty much as I can get it." After the long wearing, nerve-taxing days were over in which he was glad to relieve himself occasionally with a good story or a merry laugh, came the nights of anxiety when sleep was often banished from his pillow. He frequently wrapped himself in his Scotch shawl, and at ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. But I reckon he'd try to postpone a decision as long as he could. Unless he destroyed her in the first rush of rage, he wouldn't have the nerve to do it until he had made himself crazy drunk. It all depends on circumstances, but my judgment is—if he had a chance and if he didn't think it too great a risk—that he would try to hold her a prisoner as a sort of hostage ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... slackening until the game has been won. It makes no difference if the man you are playing against is your very best friend or your brother, and one has sometimes to pass through the trying ordeal of straining his every nerve to win a match when in his heart of hearts, for some particular reason, he would like the other man to win. I intrude these affairs of our own in these concluding reflections only for the purpose of indicating that, though we love our game and always enjoy it, professional golf is not quite ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... soon dismissed; and though Molinos' examination was much longer, it was generally expected he would have been likewise discharged: but this was not the case. Though the inquisitors had not any just accusation against him, yet they strained every nerve to find him guilty of heresy. They first objected to his holding a correspondence in different parts of Europe; but of this he was acquitted, as the matter of that correspondence could not be made criminal. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... nodded Joel, every nerve in his body tingling to begin. "Come on, Jenk, if you won't tell where you've put ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... heard a rustling beside me. Every nerve in my body tingled, and I turned my head, with a beating and expectant heart. Pshaw! It was Miss Ringtop, who spread her blue dress on the rock beside me, and shook back her long curls, and sighed, as she gazed at the silver path of the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... busybody for your pains; you'll have to take your chance of that. With your free-born democratic standards, it's impossible for you to sit still and see things go on as they are. This annual meeting's your opportunity, so you'd best pluck up your courage and nerve yourself for ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed sensitiveness—yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to make her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... shells exploding near by miss you, and you become convinced that Fritz does not really have your name and address, yet each explosion registers its shock on the nerve centers. If this be long-continued, the nerves give way and you find yourself a shell-shock patient, tagged and on your way to one of the quiet back areas where you can forget the war and get a ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... Higgins! He stood there with his armful of "War, What For?"—trembling with excitement, itching in every nerve and sinew to leap into this conflict, to make his voice heard above the uproar, to play his part as a man—or even as a Comrade Mabel Smith, or a Comrade Mary Alien, or a Comrade Mrs. Gerrity, nee Baskerville. But he was helpless, speechless—bound ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... little flying-squirrel for me to play with (must know my partiality for pets), and last night, while attempting to tame him, the little creature bit his finger, whereupon he naturally let him fall on the ground, (Temper!) which put a period to his existence. He had the nerve to skin him after the foul murder, and sent all that remains of him out to me to prove his original intention. The softest, longest, prettiest fur, and such a duck of a tail! Poor little animal couldn't have been larger than ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... "More nerve than common sense perhaps," chuckled Mr. Bentley. "But you certainly can't help admiring him. He was right there when ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... nerve-centre of the entire ten thousand acres of Los Muertos, but its appearance and furnishings were not in the least suggestive of a farm. It was divided at about its middle by a wire railing, painted green ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... desperate man and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... she said, coolly, and traced it delicately along his palm with a sea-shell tinted finger. Like cool delicious fire it spread from nerve to nerve and set aside his reason in a frenzy. He would seize the berry and feel its stain upon his lips ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... herself up-stairs sobbing, starting at every shadow. All her nerve and daring were gone. The thought that she must spend yet another night under the roof of this old woman who hated her filled her with terror. When she reached her room she locked her door and wept for hours in a ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Rather nerve-racking, wasn't it, Lester?" he remarked, and then his gaze wandered to the couch, and he stepped toward ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... so they started again for the promised land with their infant daughter Louisa. On this journey they were assisted on their way, and made easy and comfortable compared with their hasty flight from Tennessee, from whence they walked with swollen and blistered feet, and every nerve strung to its utmost tension from the fear of pursuit by ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the whole business and restored what I'd made. By God, I couldn't! I'd spent it! I was no worse than three or four others who had eyes open to their opportunities—two of 'em in the regular army now—bang-up swells, and at last I couldn't stand it and got to drinking, and then I lost my card nerve and the money went with it, and it made me desperate, crazy, I reckon; for one night when I came home drunk and she made a scene I suppose I must have struck her, and then she took sick and got delirious, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Frank would perish if assistance were not rendered tended to restore her scattered faculties, and nerve her heart for the duties now required of her; and she rose with a feeling of determination to save her companion or die beside him. Pour child! she little knew the extent of her own feebleness at that moment; but ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lived long ago or was never born,— Because no beauty bears the test In this rough peasant Hand! Confessed 'Art is null and study void!' So sayest thou? So said not I, Who threw the faulty pencil by, And years instead of hours employed, Learning the veritable use Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath Lines and hue of the outer sheath, {70} If haply I might reproduce One motive of the mechanism, Flesh and bone and nerve that make The poorest coarsest human hand An object worthy to be scanned ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... in doing business with the pure-bred American is to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and thought—matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting friction—and they are all just the least little bit in the world lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... plans. The odds were nearly three to one against us. Opposed to these, with, for our antagonists, resolute men, whose knowledge of the consequences that must inevitably follow upon an unsuccessful attempt at piracy would nerve them to desperation—men who were unquestionably full of brute courage, and who, moreover, were doubtless as well armed as ourselves—was I justified in entertaining the slightest hope of success in the event of my submitting the matter to the arbitrament of battle? ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... hard," his mother resumed, "that you have to follow a way of life not of your own choosing, you must remember that you never could be got to express a preference for one way over another, and that your father had to strain every nerve to send you to college—to the disadvantage, for a time at least, of others of the family. I am sorry to have to remind you also that you did not make it any easier for him by your mode of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... dear, unless perhaps they prosecuted her for obtaining the place with a false character, which I suppose she must have done. Still it required no ordinary pluck for a woman to undertake such a scheme, and it will require patience and nerve to carry it through; but I don't know that I agree with you that she is not the sort of woman I should have thought capable of undertaking such a business. She was quiet enough when we met her in the town; but I believe from what I have heard ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic in his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden hammer, and compel the strings to make a quivering lingering speech for him. Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded egoism, had fullness of nature enough to feel the power of this playing, and it gradually turned her inward sob of mortification into an ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... were clinging to the boat. Benjamin Selby, standing in the background, his lips set, his hands clenched, was fighting the hardest battle of his life. He knew that he alone, out of all the men there, possessed the necessary skill and nerve to reach the boat if she could be reached at all. There was a bare chance and a great risk. This man whom he hated was drowning before his eyes. Let him drown, then! Why should he risk—ay, and perchance lose—his life for his enemy? No one could blame him ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... plan that called for nerve, but we were full of spirit, and the more danger there was in an enterprise the more we relished it. At our captain's signal we rushed pell-mell through their camp. Had we dropped from the clouds the Indians could ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... days—fame tells the fact— That Scotland's heroes werena slack The heads o' stubborn foes to crack, And mak' the feckless flee, boys. Wi' brave hearts, beating true and warm, They aften tried the curlin' charm To cheer the heart and nerve the arm— The roarin' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But never—or so it seemed to her at the time—had she experienced a greater depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a small door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... decoying the public from behind cleverly contrived screens and slaughtering it without showing so much as the tip of a gun or nose that could be identified. But to my method there was a disadvantage that made men, who happen to have more hypocrisy and less nerve than I, shrink from it—when one of my tips miscarried, down upon me would swoop the bad losers in a body to give me a turbulent and interesting ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... last year. He was born in the camp and his mother died when he was a baby. God knows how he pulled through! You know what those mining places are. His father, Frank Lee, was killed in a drunken row while I was there, and Abe showed so much cool nerve and downright manliness that I offered him a place with my party. He has been ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... against National banks seemed to increase, and the fiat of a Government so rich and powerful as that of the United States would, it was maintained, suffice to make all the notes it might put out available for money, and the volume ought to be abundant enough to stimulate every nerve ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to Voyages and Travels, or even to Philosophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. The world wants smart, dandy little volumes, as thin as a Herring, and just as Salt. For these two reasons, then, do I nerve myself to a sudden leap, and entreat you now to think no longer of John Dangerous as a raw youth of eighteen summers, but as a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of his utmost eloquence. There was nothing mythical or allegorical in that subject in the opinion of the Reverend Stephen. He believed in it most firmly, and the belief afforded him the keenest satisfaction. It was a nerve-shaking sermon. Had it been of a secular nature, it might almost have been described as inhuman, so obviously was it designed to render his hearers afraid to go home in the dark. But since it was not secular, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... prairie pards finally find a chance to visit the Wyoming ranch belonging to Adrian, but managed for him by an unscrupulous relative. Of course, they become entangled in a maze of adventurous doings while in the Northern cattle country. How the Broncho Rider Boys carried themselves through this nerve-testing period makes ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... infallible sign of great mental refinement to bespatter our fellow-creatures, while every nerve is writhing in honor of our pigs, our cats, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... refers to Braham's appearance at the National Theatre, Philadelphia: "Who that heard 'Jephthall's Rash Vow' could ever forget the volume of voice which issued from that diminutive frame, or the ecstasy with which 'Waft her, angels, through the skies' thrilled every nerve of the attentive listener? He ought to have visited the United States twenty years sooner, or not have risked his reputation by coming at all. Like Incledon, he was only heard by Americans when his powers of voice were so ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... say that we could only gain above the poorest of the poor in so far as we could bring hunger for the most delicious foods, and thirst for the richest wines, and weariness to make us woo the deepest slumber. [82] Therefore, we must strain every nerve to win and to keep manhood and nobleness; so that we may gain that satisfaction which is the sweetest and the best, and be saved from the bitterest of sorrows; since to fail of good altogether is not so hard as to lose the good that has ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either of flight ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Frau von Erkel was scandalized that a French girl (she systematically ignored the German infusion in her daughters) should wish for hours of solitude. But Aimee had the national genius for pegging away, and her mother, who came in time to feel that one nerve was being gnawed with maddening reiteration, finally ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... from the spine, branch out, like the limbs and twigs of a tree, till they extend over the whole body; and, so minutely are they divided and arranged, that a point, destitute of a nerve, cannot be found on ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... claimed Handy Solomon, and without delay fired off-hand. A puff of dust showed to the right. "Nerve no good," he commented, "jerked her just ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... might see as many lawyers as he pleased, to be looked at, laughed at, and advised that there was but one way out of the scrape. Higgins was, in his speculations, a regular counterpart of Bailly; but the celebrated Mayor of Paris had not his nerve. It was impossible to say, if their characters had been changed, whether the unfortunate crisis in which Bailly was not equal to the occasion would have led to very different results if Higgins had ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... is tall and powerful, left-handed, with something more than a layman's knowledge of surgery, you had better not trouble about him," said Malcolm Sage quietly. "You might also note that the murderer belongs to the upper, or middle class, has an iron nerve, and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... prospective shift but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum of forbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in a community of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachs as a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... blind faith. Calamities were raining around the family and saddening his relatives, yet not one grazed the intrepid sub-lieutenant who was persisting in his daring deeds with the heroic nerve of a musketeer. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but, Lord bless me, he asked how much the blowers were paid and wanted me to raise their pay on the spot. That was one on me, all right; I'd thought of giving him the works to play with, but I didn't have the nerve to offer it to him after that. 'Fraid he'd either turn it down or take ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... read this plain, unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... an ammophila wasp. Sphex urnaria Klug. Lovely, but vicious, little she-demon. Injects the poison from her sting into the caterpillar's central nerve cord. That not only paralyzes but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They're alive, but they're completely helpless to resist while ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... is the peculiar humour in which I find myself when I have sacrificed too freely to the jolly god: unlike the major part of mankind, my temperament, instead of being invigorated and enlivened by the sparkling juice of the grape, loses its wonted nerve and elasticity; a sombre gloominess pervades the system, the pulse becomes nervous and languid, the spirits flagging and depressed, and the mind full of chimerical apprehensions and ennui. It was in this mood that Eglantine found ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... frazzle, And Fritzie is clipped in the comb, We're holding a big razzle-dazzle To welcome our soldier boys home. They bore themselves brave in the battle They kept themselves clean on parade, They herded the Bosches like cattle In many a nerve-racking raid. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... day in and day out, diplomatic, watchful, Belgian. And he was cheerful. What other people could have retained any vestige of cheer! Sometimes one wondered if it were not partly due to an absence of keen nerve-sensibilities, or to some other of the traits which are a product of the Belgian hothouse ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... were driven back from the mouth of the Arno, the Pisans were driven from Genoa, and scattered and spoiled by a storm. These were but skirmishes; the fight was yet to come. In Genoa they built a hundred and fifty ships of war; the Pisans, too, were straining every nerve. Then came a running fight off Sardinia, in which the Pisans had the worse of it, losing eight galleys and fifteen hundred men. Yet they were not disheartened. They made Alberto Morosini, a Venetian, their Podesta, and with him as Admirals were Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and Andreotto ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... both by land and sea that day, and Coombe had been out for many hours. He did not return to Coombe House until late in the evening. He was tired almost beyond endurance, and his fatigue was not merely a thing of muscle and nerve. After he sat down it was some time before he even glanced at the letters upon his ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a direct consequence of the vital activity of the organism in which it is seen, of such a nature that no further explanation can be given of it, any more than we can explain why a muscle is contracted under the influence of a nerve-stimulus; or whether it is due to some chemical process more or less analogous to the burning of ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... sensations depend, firstly, on the diversity of the nerves themselves, and, secondly, of the movements that are made in each nerve. We have not, however, as many different senses as there are nerves. We can distinguish but seven principal classes of nerves, of which two belong to the internal, and the other five to the external senses. The nerves which extend to the stomach, the oesophagus, the fauces, and the other internal ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... will come next Wednesday to spend a few days with us. She is very sorry that that must be all—she is on her way to New York to consult a famous nerve specialist. She sends love ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... tooth to be broken away and giving it a sharp rap with a piece of wood. The operation, called "ta-li-han," is a somewhat delicate one, requiring care to prevent breaking through into the soft part of the tooth and exposing the nerve, and is no doubt practiced by only one or two persons in a group, though this fact could not be ascertained. Notwithstanding this mutilation, the teeth seem to be remarkably healthy and well preserved except in ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... that the seriousness of the outbreak had been understood, and the orders had gone out by galloper to "Get a move on!" each commanding officer strained every nerve at once to strike where a blow would have the most effect. There was no thought of anything but action, and offensive, not defensive action. Until some one at the head of things proved still to be alive, and had had time to form a plan, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... tired, somehow—perhaps with travelling too hard—perhaps with too much anxiety to get on quickly with this Grand Trunk business; but, on the whole, I am very well, and have kept my spirits and nerve up to the mark, generally. I have a great task in hand, and I should like to come ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, and, with the ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... features, at these critical moments when he seemed just falling into the snares so artfully set for him. When she caught his eyes glowing with passionate admiration, she shyly affected to withdraw hers from his gaze, turning on him at times flashes of her dark eyes which electrified every nerve of his sensuous nature. She felt the pressure of his hand, the changed and softened inflections of his voice, she knew the words of her fate were trembling on his lips, and yet they did not come! The shadow of that pale hand at Beaumanoir, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sort Discarded from a philo-Teuton Court; The tolerant warmth that sheds a kind of lustre Over a stout Ausonian filibuster Does not extend to thoroughly bad hats Like abdicated Hellene autocrats. And, if the Allies feel some slight reserve About resisting your confounded nerve, I, GABRIELE, do not. You may be A kind of subject satrap under me; If not, look out. You shall have cause to know The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... else entered the room, there was the scratching of a match, and a pale thread of light crept under the door of his prison, showing that the lamp had been relighted. He listened intently, jealously, straining every nerve to hear and to understand. Voices whispered; he could distinguish the tones of the two men, but not their words, the muffled muttering was too low; then there came a cry, followed by a rapid movement ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... Nerve-exhaustion and loss of blood soon made themselves felt. Ensconcing himself on a hard sofa that stood at the head of Klitzing's bed, he fell ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the young man's father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world, excused the son's constant presence in the house, he professing an old attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. More than this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moina and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to separate them would carry no weight; that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... John goes to the intensest, and the most significant incident of this whole section of the book. It is the drastic turning out, by Jesus, of the traders in the temple-area at Jerusalem. This touched at once the national leaders' most sensitive nerve, and touched it roughly. It never ceased aching. This turning of the temple-area into a common market-place, which so jarred on the holy atmosphere of the place, and on Jesus' fine spirit, this was by arrangement with these leaders, and yielded them large profit. ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension, of Christ ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... should be elected who would not favor their end. A cardinal was found,—Ganganelli,—who promised the ambassadors that, if elected pope, he would abolish the order. They, accordingly, intrigued to secure his election. The Jesuits, also, strained every nerve, and put forth marvellous talent and art, to secure a pope who would protect them. But the ambassadors of the allied powers overreached even the Jesuits. Ganganelli was the plainest, and, apparently, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the net of my nerves gently—yea, verily, in desultory fashion—and brought slight disorder among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, and there were fibres and delicate root-like filaments adhering to the finger, and they were the nerve-threads of the filaments. And there was a gaping hole after the finger, which was God's finger, and a wound in my brain in the track of His finger. But when God had touched me with His finger, He let me ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... heard me—and so did you! But no, you had to lose your nerve and lose your head just because you'd had a ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... from the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to hear. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... to be the one certain result of the last General Election that there is a large majority in favour of maintaining our naval position; but we cannot maintain that naval position without straining every nerve to do it, and we shall not be able to put all our energy into maintaining that position if we talk about invasion, and tell the people of this country that the fleet cannot do its duty.... If you put the doctrine ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... morning was in that interest to square me, to get me to deny indignantly and authoritatively (for isn't she my 'favourite sitter'?) that she has anything whatever the matter with any part of her. She sobbed, she 'went on,' she entreated; after we got talking her extraordinary nerve left her and she showed me what she has been through—showed me also all her terror of the harm I could do her. 'Wait till I'm married! wait till I'm married!' She took hold of me, she almost sank on her knees. It seems to ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... serious than she had at first supposed. It was a long time before she could leave her bed. She had injured her back and ankle very badly, and she underwent a long course of massage and baths; but she never permanently got quite well again. She said herself, "Strength, health, and nerve I had hitherto looked upon as a sort of right of nature, and supposed that everybody had them; I never felt grateful for them as a blessing, but I began to learn what suffering was from this date." Henceforth we see her not as the woman who was ready to share any ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... readiness to pass into movement in the absence of all stimulation whatever; the essential requisite being that the nerve-centres and muscles shall be fresh and vigorous...The gesticulations and the carols of young and active animals are mere overflow of nervous energy; and although they are very apt to concur with pleasing emotion, they have an independent source...They are not properly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... boys, and what they would say if they knew that he had not nerve enough to pot the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... he would desert her, her deeply wounded pride could not have held out, and she surely must have found refuge in his arms. But her humiliation had been so very deep, and her mood was now such that every nerve was quivering with indignation; so, subduing the pleading of her heart, she sprang away from the outstretched arms. As she faced him the angry color again stole into her cheeks, and she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice: "There are things, Harold, that a woman cannot forgive and retain ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... inner rooms, lady Feng was, it is true, much cut up at heart; but she strained every nerve to preserve an exterior of total indifference. Noticing that there was no one present in the apartment, she drew P'ing Erh to her. "I drank yesterday," she smiled, "a little more wine than was good for me, so don't bear me a grudge. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and yet unspoil'd Guiana, whose great Citie Geryons Sons 410 Call El Dorado: but to nobler sights Michael from Adams eyes the Filme remov'd Which that false Fruit that promis'd clearer sight Had bred; then purg'd with Euphrasie and Rue The visual Nerve, for he had much to see; And from the Well of Life three drops instill'd. So deep the power of these Ingredients pierc'd, Eevn to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam now enforc't to close his eyes, Sunk down and all his Spirits became intranst: 420 But him the gentle Angel ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... that there was sensation in matter, but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth." She would not allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its ulcerations, and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian Science faith did her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find so doing.' It may seem humble work to serve out hunches of bread and pots of black broth to the family of slaves, when the steward is expecting the coming of the master of the house, and his every nerve is tingling with anticipation. But it is steadying work, and it is blessed work. It is better that a man should be found doing the homeliest duty as the outcome of his great expectations of the coming of his Master, than that he should be fidgeting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is of gentle nerve, And my grief had moved him beyond control; For his lips grew white, as I could observe, When he speeded her ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Federals were now forming in line of battle, the Valley soldiers had already given proof of their stubborn qualities on the defensive. The sight of their baptismal battle-field and the memories of Bull Run must have gone far to nerve the hearts of the Stonewall regiments, and in preparing once more to justify their proud title the troops were aided by their leader's quick eye for a position. While it was still dark the divisions which had been engaged at Groveton ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... arrested at the nerve centers and turned back without their reaching the brain ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... of exploring, and were perplexed, because the more dangers we surmounted the greater seemed the dangers confronting us. They were beginning to lose the nerve they had temporarily acquired, and were now so scared at the vicious waters that they tried to keep the canoe all the time close to the banks or islands, the river being so deep that they thought this was the best way of saving their lives in case ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... power of detachment, and the day, in consequence, appeared to be interminable. The great national importance of the issue, the suspense in high quarters, the direct nature of the experiment which we were trying—all combined to work upon my nerve. It was a relief to me when at last, after a light dinner, we set out upon our expedition. Lestrade and Mycroft met us by appointment at the outside of Gloucester Road Station. The area door of Oberstein's house had been left open the night before, and it ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what the people are like," he said. "They are like dumb animals, like sheep. They have suffered so long and so much that their nerve power is numbed. They lack will, they lack initiative. They are narrowed down to a daily life which makes of them something little different from an animal. Yet they can be roused. David Ross himself has done it, done it like none of those other M.P.'s. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to Breathe—Oriental Methods. Chapter VII. Four Methods of Respiration as Classified by the Yogis—The Yogi Complete Breath. Chapter VIII. How to Acquire the Yogi Complete Breath. Chapter IX. Physiological Effect of the Complete Breath. Chapter X. Yogi Lore—The Yogi Cleansing Breath—The Yogi Nerve Vitalizing Breath—The Yogi Vocal Breath. Chapter XI. Seven Yogi Developing Exercises. Chapter XII. Chapter XIII. Vibration and Yogi Rhythmic Breathing—How to Ascertain the Heart Beat Unit Used by the Yogis as the Basis of Rhythmic Breathing. Chapter ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat. Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road nearest the edge of the cliff when as if ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... part of his task had been accomplished. Could he reach the floor in safety? Gradually he worked himself backward over the rail, in imminent danger of falling; but his nerve never wavered, and I could see a wonderful light in his eyes. With something of a lurch, his body fell against the outer side of the railing, to which he was hanging by his chin, the line still held firmly in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... brief formal call, with the conversation strictly limited to the weather and similarly safe subjects, would make it possible for them to meet thereafter in society without too acute embarrassment. Had he the pluck for this, the nerve to carry it through? That was the only question. There was no doubt as to what he ought to do. It would be an awkward call, to put it mildly. It would be skating on terribly thin ice —a little thinner, perhaps, than a ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... footsore. Mention of the cold must have become monotonous. But this night's cold touched a sharper nerve of agony than any before. Our 'rest' came, by a refinement of cruelty, not immediately before dawn, but between 2.30 and 4.30 a.m. We were then on bleak uplands, swept by arctic winds. In Baghdad ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... entirely lacking in the former. For we find that although folk song is composed of the same material as savage music, the material is arranged coherently into sentences instead of remaining the mere exclamation of passion or a nerve exciting reiteration of unchanging rhythms and vibrations, as is the case in the music of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell |
